The Mirror Empire

by Kameron Hurley

  “Don’t go,” he said. He pushed the damp hair from her face. Her skin was hot. She looked so much like their mother… “You promised,” he said. “You promised me you wouldn’t die like they did.”

  For over a year after that day in the Dorinah slave camps, when he watched his father’s head lopped off and saw his mother burn, he had expected Kirana to die too. The dreams got so bad they stalked him during the day. The Oras, especially Nasaka, thought him mad. It was Kirana who brought him back from madness, Kirana and her promise.

  “You said –”

  “I can’t make the future, Ahkio,” she said. “It’s yours, now. I shouldn’t have pulled you from the fire, I know. Another woman would have chosen mother instead, wouldn’t she? But I chose you, brother. You were supposed…” She started coughing, great hacking sobs that shook her body. Blood appeared at her mouth, flecked the sheets. “It was all…” she gasped. “All wrong, this turn. I’ve made it right.”

  “Do you regret it?” he said softly.

  “Never,” she said. “But you should know… about Yisaoh.” She gazed up at the long lines of poetry running along the ceiling. Ahkio tried to read them, but the light was too dim. He said a prayer to Sina instead.

  Ahkio tried to pull his hand from her grip. “I’ll get you tea. Do you –”

  She squeezed his fingers. “I’m too late.” She coughed blood onto their joined hands, and said through bloody lips, “Dhai’s peace...” Her fingers clenched his, once.

  She made a strange strangling cough, almost a sigh.

  He said, “Don’t,” he said.

  Her eyes lost their focus. Her fingers relaxed in his.

  Ahkio bent over her body. The flies in the lantern began to dim as they settled. Kirana’s fingers cooled in his hands. He prayed to Sina, to take her soul, and Oma, to bless him with wisdom in her absence.

  He sat next to his dead sister in silence. The world did not move. The air did not tremble. Nothing was different at all, except he was alone now, because someone had killed his sister.

  He did not weep. He had wept over their parents for a year. It changed nothing. No, he knew what he needed to do now.

  When the door opened, Ahkio lifted his head. His neck and shoulders were stiff.

  Nasaka stepped through the archway, her expression stern. “We must meet the sanisi now. The Ora council is ready.”

  “Kirana,” Ahkio said.

  “Has she passed?”

  Ahkio stared into Kirana’s slack face, the still-open but blank eyes. He thought of Meyna. Oma, how he wanted to go home to Meyna and Rhin and Hadaoh and Mey-mey. But they weren’t going to be his kin anymore, were they? It’s why they had never married him. They knew this day would come. Someone would kill the Kai, and Ahkio would take her seat. Did they hope he would grant them favors, on that day?

  “We have a duty to Dhai,” Nasaka said, following his stare. “We must get you dressed in something befitting your… title.”

  “That’s like you,” Ahkio said. His voice broke. “You’ll watch another Kai perish, just like you watched my mother die. You pull all the strings.”

  “No,” Nasaka said. “I don’t watch Kais die. I call tirajistas to save them. I use my sword to defend them. They may die, regardless. But I always act. You’re the one who bides his time, waiting for someone else to make his fate. So get up, Ahkio. I don’t pull strings. I pull the people attached to them.”

  “I’ll find out who killed her, Nasaka, if I have to burn this whole temple down around me.”

  “One fire at a time,” Nasaka said. “That sanisi upstairs is asking for you.”

  5.

  Roh drew himself up outside the painted door of the sanisi’s quarters and raised his hand. Fear flooded him, but he held his ground. He had convinced one of the drudges in the kitchens to send him up with the sanisi’s meal of rice and curried yams. Roh found himself salivating over it during the entire climb to the sixth floor. It was well past dinner, but he’d been too excited to eat.

  Now he waited with the cooling yams and rice on a tray, both terrified and hopeful that the sanisi would answer. Finding the sanisi in the foyer had been like discovering some mythical being from a ritual retelling come to life. He didn’t know how long the sanisi would stay, but he wasn’t going to give up the opportunity to learn something from him. Or figure out a way to run off to Saiduan with him.

  Roh pushed open the door – there were no locks on doors in Dhai - and called, “I’ve brought-”

  He looked at his feet as he entered, careful not to trip over the tapestried rug. He heard something hiss. For a moment it sounded like a spitting lily, and he wondered how such a dangerous plant had gotten into the temple.

  Then he saw the flash of metal, the flurry of movement.

  It was a blade.

  Roh threw the tray ahead of him and stepped back. The blade met the tray and sliced it in two. Rice and bits of yam spattered the walls, the rug.

  Roh rotated his body and crouched low, making himself a smaller, thinner target. He held out his forearms to take the worst of the onslaught and called on Para for aid. It was like drawing air through his skin; air only he could sense, only he could breathe – and power only another parajista could see. His fists tightened. He held the breath of Para there, just beneath his skin. He concentrated on the Litany of the Palisade, to construct a shield of air. The air began to condense around him, grow heavy. A brilliant blue mist swirled around him; a blessing. Para was fickle, and didn’t always respond when he called. Even now, the shield he wove came together slowly. Far too slowly.

  He heard harsh words in Saiduan, and peered through his raised arms. The sanisi stared at him, blade pointed at the floor. Roh let go of his breath, but not Para. His knuckles grazed the solid wall of misty blue air in front of him, formed a moment too late.

  “Is there no privacy in this country?” the sanisi said, in heavily accented Dhai.

  Roh straightened. He let go of the litany. The air around him returned to its regular pressure. His ears popped. The blue breath of Para dissipated.

  Roh stared at the mess of rice and broken yam pieces scattered across the room. One half of the tray rested near his foot. The other had settled behind the sanisi. Roh imagined that could have been his head. It was a stupid mistake. He should have known better.

  “Sorry,” Roh said. “I’m Rohinmey Tadisa Garika, a student of Ora Dasai’s. Forgot about Saiduan privacy. I meant no offense. We’re very open, here.”

  The sanisi sheathed his blade.

  Roh had not gotten a good look at the sanisi back in the foyer. Now that he was up close, he realized he had made a false assumption. The sanisi was tall, far taller than any Dhai, and dark, with twisted rings of black hair knotted close to his head, though it looked like it had been shorn short not many months back. The ends were ragged. It was the sanisi’s face, though, that made Roh pause. The hair that graced the sanisi’s upper lip and the sides of the cheeks was soft and downy. Roh had seen pictures of Saiduan men, and they all had short but noticeable beards.

  “Are you a woman?” Roh asked.

  The sanisi narrowed her eyes. “I am a good many things, depending on the day.”

  “I didn’t think women could become sanisi. I’ve never seen a picture of one.”

  “And I’ve never seen a picture of a fool Dhai boy. Yet here you are.”

  Roh squared his shoulders. “I know things.”

  “What does a petty pacifist know of the empire?”

  “I know enough,” Roh said. “I know that’s not an infused weapon. It’s just metal. Sanisi carry infused willowthorn and bonsa and everpine branches, like ours. If I can see that, Ora Dasai will too.”

  “Perhaps I was not always thus,” the sanisi said. “And your elders see less than you suppose.”

  Roh pulled at Para.His skin prickled. But Para rebelled. The power of its breath surged through his body, then sputtered out.

  The sanisi laughed, a bitter bark. “You
try to bowl me over with your little training exercises and you will know the power of the dark star. I have no qualm with incinerating you, mouth-breather.”

  “The dark star? No one can draw on Oma. It hasn’t been in the sky in two thousand years.”

  “About due then, isn’t it?”

  “Why are you here?”

  “You’re not the only one who can see things, boy. If your masters learn of your indiscretion, it could be bad for you.”

  “I’d like to be a sanisi,” Roh said. “They don’t teach us how to fight here the way you fight. Para will be descendant soon. I won’t have an advantage unless I can fight. Really fight.”

  “Advantage against what? Wandering trees and pitcher plants?”

  “I need to change my fate,” Roh said.

  The sanisi murmured something in Saiduan about foolish boys and bait for wolves. “Your fate?” she said. “That is easy to see. But I’m not here for you.”

  “Who are you here for?”

  “The Kai.”

  “But I could go with you! Are you taking novices or –”

  “Your speech is exhausting.”

  “I just –”

  The sanisi half turned away, then reconsidered. “You’re the boy who was with that scullery girl,” she said.

  “Who?”

  “That crippled girl.”

  “Lilia?”

  “I wonder,” the sanisi said,” what does a pretty parajista with a fiery interest in death have to say to a plain-faced crippled girl?”

  “You have a weird way of seeing people,” Roh said. “I don’t know why being plain matters. She’s very smart.”

  “I suppose when you don’t seek to own a thing,” the sanisi said, “its beauty matters less.”

  “Will you teach me to fight?” Roh asked.

  Someone knocked at the door. “Permission to enter?” Dasai’s voice, speaking perfect Saiduan.

  Roh sighed. It was the sewer dregs for a year, for sure.

  “Do enter,” the sanisi said.

  Roh stepped away from the door, and Dasai came in. They regarded each other for a long moment, then Roh looked at his feet.

  “I apologize deeply for the impolite behavior of our young people,” Dasai said, in Dhai this time. “We are quite isolated. Unfortunately that means our young don’t often engage foreign visitors. If this child caused offense –”

  “Offense was given,” the sanisi said, “but can be mitigated. Thus far I have been instructed to bathe in a great underground chamber, given flowery clothes smelling of rotten plant matter, and had rice thrown at me. Yet my purpose for this visit has yet to be fulfilled. I understand you heard word of my coming from my Patron. I should not have been unexpected.”

  “The acting Kai is now prepared to meet you,” Dasai said. “I do apologize for the delay. Ora Chali is waiting outside to escort you.”

  Dasai motioned for the sanisi to move into the hall. Roh saw his own older brother, Chali Finahin Badu, standing there with hands clasped, his too-long hair hanging into his eyes. Most people didn’t guess that Chali and Roh were brothers – they shared a family of two mothers and three fathers, but were not blooded relations.

  Chali’s eyes widened when he saw Roh, but he said nothing. Roh knew he’d hear about it later. Chali was always telling Roh how something or other Roh did hurt Chali’s chances of being Elder Ora of Tira’s Temple someday.

  “Ora Chali, escort our guest upstairs, please,” Dasai said. “I will be but a moment.”

  Roh’s half-hoped Dasai would be so busy with the sanisi that he’d just send Roh downstairs.

  Chali and the sanisi moved down the hall. Roh waited.

  And waited.

  “You’re angry,” Roh said.

  “I am furious,” Dasai said. “There is a game here you don’t understand. You could be exiled.”

  “Exiled? We were talking. Just talking!”

  Dasai lowered his voice. “That is a Saiduanese assassin. He has killed more people with his own hands than inhabit this temple.”

  Roh wanted to correct Dasai on the sanisi’s gender, but thought better of it. Dasai was still using the male-assertive pronoun, while Roh now thought female-assertive was more appropriate. The sanisi had carefully used none in reference to herself.

  “One ill word from that man,” Dasai said, “and the Saiduan Patron sends one thousand men like him into Dhai. They murder every last one of us. Every one. They wanted us dead two millennia ago. They nearly succeeded. Don’t think they won’t look for a reason to come here and end it.” Dasai struck the floor between Roh’s feet with his walking stick. “And all because one vain boy could not stomach his fate.”

  “I’m meant for greater things,” Roh said. “Anyone can see that.”

  Dasai grimaced. Roh hated what he saw – disappointment, anger, disgust. Roh knew he was supposed to be like every other Dhai, like Lilia, just doing what he was told, having babies for Dhai, growing crops in the same spaces, fighting back the same toxic plants from the fields, using Para only to build, to defend, to grow. But to grow them into what?

  “It’s not enough for me,” Roh said.

  “Then maybe this temple is not the place for you.”

  “No, no!” Roh said, because exile was worse. Exile meant Dorinah, to become a slave, or the woodland, to get eaten by some blinding-tree. And then he laughed, because he maybe that’s how it would all play out – they would exile him, and he’d join some woodland exiles, and teach them farming. And he’d die a farmer.

  “Sleep, Rohinmey,” Dasai said. “Tell Ora Almeysia I excuse your tardiness. Just… sleep. We’ll discuss atonement in the morning.”

  Roh wiped at his face and hurried to the scullery stair. The risks he took were real, he knew. But the risk of being exiled still paled next to the risk of squandering his life. He pushed and pushed, and nothing ever changed. His parents had tired of his constant questions and boundless energy. It was almost a relief to them when the Oras who came to Clan Garika tested him for sensitivity to the satellites and discovered he could draw on Para.

  But when Para was descendent? He’d be an unlovable burden again.

  Roh sat on the scullery stair steps. He needed to think his way out, even though it wasn’t his strength. Lilia was the one good with strategy and problem solving.

  The flame flies in the lanterns cast flickering light in the dark stairwell. He heard a voice from below, murmuring words he could not quite make out.

  Roh leaned around the curl of the corridor to get a look at who was coming up.

  It was Almeysia. Again. Talking aloud in the scullery stair. Again.

  But she was not alone this time.

  Almeysia walked up the stairs with a hooded woman. Roh knew the figure. It was Yisaoh Alais Garika, daughter to the clan leader of Clan Garika. Roh had seen her often enough there to recognize her generous shape and strong jaw, even with her face cowled in the dim light.

  Roh stood. He expected Almeysia to admonish him. But when she saw him she came up short. The expression that crossed her face was one he had never seen on an Ora – guilt mixed with a terrible fear. Yisaoh tipped her head downward, drowning her face in shadows.

  Almeysia wet her lips and said, “Rohinmey. You should not be here.” They were three steps below him.

  “Yisaoh,” Roh said, “I didn’t know you were in the temple.”

  Yisaoh raised her head. She was a tall, handsome woman with knotted curls of dark hair tied back from her face, and a broad, slightly crooked nose, the result of a break many years before, the last time Para was ascendant. Roh remembered that because if it had been any other time, some tirajista or sinajista could have mended the bone before it healed wrong. But her face looked more hollowed, thinner than he remembered, and this close now, he saw the bulk of her figure was made up of her thick coat.

  “Oh, child,” Almeysia said. “You always could see too much.”

  Yisaoh moved up one step into the cramped space. Roh turne
d, to give her room to pass. She grabbed his arm.

  He was so startled he froze. The Saiduan were dangerous people, but not Dhai. Not his own clan mate. Why would she touch him without consent?

  Pain burned through his belly. It came so quickly and unexpectedly that he gasped. His legs gave out. Yisaoh cradled him. He saw her pull a blade from his stomach. Saw wet blood.

  His blood.

  Roh grabbed at her hand, smearing blood on his fingers. The blade came down again. He saw the stain of blood bloom across his tunic and apron. He made a half-hearted attempt to clutch at his wound, to stop the bleeding. Yisaoh’s hand came down again. Pain blotted out sense.

  Almeysia knelt over him. She closed his eyes with her leathery hand.

  “You didn’t tell me there were novices here who could see through hazing wards,” Yisaoh muttered.

  “I didn’t realize,” Almeysia said. “Oma’s breath, I didn’t know.”

  Roh saw himself standing in an apple orchard, holding the hand of a small child.

  “They’ve arrived,” the child said.

  6.

  Ahkio leaned over the table in the Assembly Chamber at the top of Oma’s temple. He watched the gathered Elder Oras and senior Ora advisors and wondered which of them had murdered his sister, and to what purpose. He was a little unsteady, so sat in the chair to the right of the Kai’s seat, the chair reserved for her heir, which he’d sat in only once, the day they returned from the Dorinah camps and Nasaka called the circle of Elder Oras and the temple’s Ora council – the same faces he saw now.

  Gaiso frowned at him from the other side of the room, but did not break in conversation with her assistant. Elder Ora Masura of the Temple of Tira waved to him from the hall. Masura was a splendid, regal old woman, and one of his mother’s many lovers. She came around the table and asked to take his hands.

  He consented, only because he did not want to draw her suspicion; he was exhausted, and angry, and he feared what he would say. She took his scarred hands in her smooth, cold palms and blessed him.

  “It’s been a decade since I saw you last, hasn’t it?” she said. “I wish it were under better circumstances.”